coops1967

Last year? Are you sure...? I thought i'd seen these around in 2010, if not before.... When do you expect Kobayashi-san to design a new forged iron for S-Yard?

Tried out the impact tape and a sharpie line on the ball... with a driver it doesn't give a very clear line at all. I tried with my 8 iron after, and you can get very nice clear line on the impact tape - even if you swing again without re- marking the line on the ball. Perhaps the much lower spin rate with a driver doesn't allow the ink to transfer so well - maybe a whiteboard ink marker would work better. The only slight mark i got with the driver looked not too bad ie about right, not too upright or flat with 56.5 deg lie driver and Nunchuk shaft at 44" long. Seems to confirm results on the course - curvature of my drives on best swings is as straight as it's ever been, and no issues with a big push from an excessive flat lie/ open face. Bear in mind, i'm still reducing my goat humping issues (!) - so as i hope to improve my swing thru impact, my lie angles at impact should if anything get a touch flatter. Oh, and i'm a recovering hooker, so flatter lie suits me for that reason too. I did hear one guy who fit people indoors with a ball he'd ground or hacksawed a channel/ groove in to the ball so that would show up on impact tape.

Ant, just be careful with the Nunchuk.. as in do NOT throw it in at 45" or whatever just to see. I first had the Nunchuk made up with the Yonex 380 while i was in the USA... just on spec as it were, without any testing of the head or shaft ( madness ! haha) but I knew i'd never have the chance back in Bangkok. Oddly the shaft felt fine immediately, but the guy in florida who it has experience with that head and shaft so... it seems to me that at 44" made up with a head around 200 gm or so giving SW of d0 it is oddly wonderful. Two drivers now, the Adams and the Mizuno both 44" , both Nunchuk and they both are the dog's bollocks... and yes i can still hook an Adams 9015 in a Nunchuk, sadly ;-) I'll get down the range with the impact tape and marker and give it a go on the lie angle side of things... i'm curious, too. Want to know what custom lie option i need for the yoro 611, ha. Incidentally, wishon's site explains he uses 58 as his standard lie because he expects the heads to be made up to 45" or Less, and probably less, which thus needs somewhat less upright lie than a 46" driver. Oh, and a smaller head with the COG closer to the shaft plane as in the T388 or a Miz 611 should, to my Engneer's mind anyway, cause LESS shaft droop than say a Ping G25 with a much longer heel to toe and so COG much further away from the shaft plane. Leverage - the swing forces at the head COG will have more leverage further away from the shaft ... causing more shaft droop with heads having a COG further from the shaft. Maybe Miura was right when he said that 390cc was 'easier'...

A Yoro 611... count me in. I'd order another head custom tomorrow... fraction open, even flatter, and matte black. Or raw nitrided titanium. Oh, little heavier.. 203 gm. ;-)

Ant, as a fellow hooker ( and worse, a pull hooker) I'd advise first trying a Nunchuk shaft - such a stiff tip it gets rid of toe droop issue, which. will give easier repeatability. Heavier but doesn't feel it when swung and deosn't feel boardy like a usual very low torque shaft. Of course, less droop means the head will come in steeper, more upright, than a droopy POS noodle... oops. But, the Nunchuk should only be max around 44" long made up so this offsets some of the issue ( a shorter club would ideally need a higher upright anyway ). Then a flat lie drive or a open face driver. The open face will compensate for the upright lie - upright points the face left, open face points it right... And the golden boy for this is an old head the Adams 9015d - get it cheap, it's one of the best ever ( and even more so for anyone with a left tendency). Maybe even contact Sellingers Gofl in the US, as they used to stock loads of these and picked my head out heavier to suit a bblueboard 80 shaft at 44 1/2" at that time. Flat lies are not so easy to find - my Miz 611 can be ordered at 56.5 deg lie which is something... but if i find a guy who can bend Ti drivers i'll be using him... ps Vegaman - thanks for the wishon info. His drivers are standard at 58 degrees... and he himself has been banging on for a long ,long time how the average golfer needs to play shorter shafted drivers ie LESS than 44 1/2" .

Toe droop.... just how bad are these graphite shafts? Check out the Mizuno Europe site, the MP-64 ... the 6 iron at standard length is 61 degrees lie. 6 iron!!! . A driver... driver, ffs, at the same lie angle as a standard 6 iron? Madness. And the longer your driver shaft, the more mad this is. Taking the irons as an example, they go down in lie one degree per one inch in length increase... so. as reasonable first guess we could say that from a 38 1/4" long 4 iron at 60 degree lie, then to get to a 44 1/4" driver needs an extra 6 inches length... 6 degrees of lie down = 54. 54. And that's for a 'short' driver by modern standards. 45 1/4" you're looking at 53 lie... and if you need flatter lies in your irons you're so way way sh@t out of luck - unless you're on the tour or know a specialist who can bend Ti drivers a good 4 degrees flat for a start. If you need 8 degrees to account for toe droop... then we need better shafts.

If raw heads, then oiling and keeping dry is needed... as well as not living in Thailand, Singapore or anywhere else too hot and humid... if they're nickel chrome plated then any oiling is completely unneccessary. You can even use them at the seaside beach, as long as you rinse them off with tap water afterwards ;-) Dings from bag chatter are inevitable unless you religiously use head covers. That new shiny look is lovely... but a bit of character is no bad thing - that first ding on your club will look the worst but give it time and enjoy using them for years, unless you ho them every 3 months then protect them as much as you can! I'm a bit partial to the smell of WD-40 myself.

Sadly, for the reason above, there is absolutely no way whatsoever i'll be buying any raw finish club - i had some lovely Yururi wedges with that gorgeous raw grain look where you could see the grind etc, and had some black finished Epon heads... and both rust like hell in hot humid Thailand. Shame, as i saw the Bold wedge at golfcraft... very interesting to see how thick the top edge has to be to get the COG up, even after you hollow out the sole and put tungsten plugs near the top edge. Fourteen did their wedge in a nitrided finish for a while - S- Yard.... please? The nitriding gives greater corrosion resistance than a chrome plating, yet is NOT a plating so has no measurable effect to the groove dimensions, peformance etc, unlike regular Ni- Cr plate. And the thinness of the nitrided surface layer ensures you still feel the natural forged steel ductility underneath. Mind you, a Bold wedge with only the S-yard gear logo in the back channel in an Endo copper chrome would be something - matte copper chrome face and back channel, num, num, num. Goflcraft has a few t388 heads also... and the Xt heads, which are sure to be redesigned asap... ick.

Nice review and pics - they look good... and gocchin, don't give up telling them about the stamp overkill - you're dead right about the WDD accurate forged - take Mizuno's example and put that discretely on the neck, out of sight at address... as for the 'fast and strong' - oh, dear.

I have played the Yonex 380 in the same Nunchuk shaft as my Adams 9015 d and now the Mizuno 611. the Yonex at address is spectacularly beautiful. However the Syard or the Miz 611 are also very, very beautiful. BUT feel/ sound and perfoermance and forgiveness there is NO comparison whatsoever - can't personally say about the Syard, but the Miz 611 sh@ts all over the Yonex, and astonishly even holds it's own against the Adams. Don't waste your time with the Yonex. If you tend to draw/ hook I hereby endorse, again!, the Mizuno 611 ordered at the lower lie angle. Seriously fabulous. ps look for my comparison shots of the Yonex v Mizuno 611 and you see the far bigger hittable face area on the Mizuno.

Just to be clear - teed up or not, a too upright lie causes your driver face to be pointing more left than it would do otherwise - which is very bad news for an in to out (or in to straightish swing) with a clubface normally slightly closed to the path ie someone who normally hits a nice push draw with irons.... My previous driver was (...is, still have it and love it) an Adams 9015d - quite legendary, and with alie of 58 degrees the major factor in its popularity is its dramatically more open face angle off the shelf. It was the saviour for all the draw/hookers out there... I understand until last few years, Callaway was using 56 degrees as standard drive lie angle. 60 and higher is getting out of hand... like 46" clubs and 50g shafts. Perhaps some chicken and egg problem here..... i suspect an upright lie encourages high hands/goat humping etc - we under rate our own ability to adjust to clubs, and end up with clubs that push you to get the shaft too steep. With all this upright lie angle, and closed faces I STILL see huge slices as a matter of course from most players - look at it from this way :- Take a player with a 15 yard slice with the driver. Tell him to aim 15 yards to the left of the fairway - after all that 15 yard slice will put him slap bang in the middle, right? He knows it, undertands it too... and what happens? He hits a 30 YARD SLICE (!!) His subconscious knows it should work, but it also 'feels' he's aiming off left and tries to fix it.. and generates an even worse open face, out to in swing... And this works(fails) for in "reverse" for a chronic hooker like i am/was.... The Pro's will have their clubs fitted to them - there are plenty with Nunchuk shafts resprayed in the TM colours so to speak, so i hear... and you may have heard how they can get their driver heads bent flatter (just like irons) - I understand Sellingers Golf can also do this for some Adams heads (? ,or used to?) If Pro's are about 44 1/2" or maybe 45" long drivers why are Amateurs choosing longer clubs? Absolutely the reverse of what they genuinely need to consistently hit the ball better... but a 46" 50g shafted driver will once in a blue moon produce a longer drive.... ah, well. Note swingweights are only useful as a rough guide to having clubs feel the same when swung when ALL the clubs have the SAME shaft at 1/2" length increments - and back in the day of steel shafted drivers was ok.... but having your 46" 50g shafted river at D2 to 'match' your irons with 120gm shafts is a placebo. Rant over ;-) I'll try and do the sharpie test with the Mizuno when i get home to see how flat/upright the 56.5 is for me - it seems to work well on the course...

Obviously, as you know, having a too upright lie results in the face pointing left. This is precisely why iron lie angles are considered an important nad most basic part of a club fitting... and HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TURF INTERACTION. The old wive's tale of 'the heel digging in and face shutting' is utter rubbish. Any iron shot, the ball is long gone before the club hits the ground (unless you prefer to hit all your irons shots fat). An upright lie with an iron hit off a tee will produce the same pull/left shot as if you hit it off the ground... or if you hit the ball off a sidehill lie with the bal above your feet. With a drivers lower loft, the angular error of incorrect lie angles is much less than say a 9 iron.. but of course the driver goes further - and most importantly the upright lie influences ball curvature - those who are hook prone will absolutely detest absurd 60 degree lie angle drivers (why are Pro's, the best golfers, still having drivers custom bent flat with special head moulds to prevent damaging the head?). Then there's the issue of what having a driver sitting at address with the toe way up, does to your sub conscious. I think we may under estimate our ability... we routinely change clubs from 9 to 8 or choke down and make adjustments without barely thinking about it... now having that toe up i suspect 'tells' you you're going to have to hump that goat pretty hard to get the handle higher and the clubhead where it 'should' be.... Open face drivers are a band-aid for this lie problem, as it offests the leftward face due to upright lie. Check this thread http://thesandtrap.c...degrees-of-loft here's an excerpt... " What's 1.4 degrees? If we ignore curve for now, a ball starting 1.4° left of the target (a righty golfer) will land 4.89 yards left on a 200-yard drive, 6.11 yards left on a 250-yard drive, and 7.33 yards left on a 300-yard drive. But that's just the start line. How much will the spin axis tilt change the flight? Though θE is only 1.4°, we've grabbed the top vector of the D-Plane and rotated it 8° left, so our spin axis is -8° more than it otherwise would have been. Trackman results say that: a) For every 5 degrees of tilt in spin axis the ball will curve approximately 3.5 yards to the side per every 100 yards of carry. (Source: http://www.trackman....newsletter7.pdf). So, 8° is 1.6 times 5, and so we can re-run our numbers: 200 yds -> = 1.6 * 3.5 * 2 = 11.2 yards. 250 yds -> 1.6 * 3.5 * 2.5 = 14 yards, and 300 yds = 16.8 yards. Adding those to the lateral error, we get: a) a 200 yard drive will finish roughly 16 yards farther left than it would have been otherwise. b) a 250 yard drive will finish roughly 20 yards farther left. c) a 300 yard drive will finish roughly 24 yards farther left."

Two good reason why i like my Mizuno 611 and nunchuk shaft. The head I ordered at 56.5 deg lie angle. The Nunchuk shaft is extremely tip stiff - forget about toe droop, and is played at 44" or less length generally, reducing toe droop forces even more.

There's another option... kind of 'semi-JDM' as it's Bridgestone. Tried to find this when i was in the States, but thanks to the woeful B'stone distribution couldn't find it (or any other of their gear) anywhere in the PA area. There's a 430cc (i think) version of the J40 driver - meant to be excellent and good shape... if you can find it. You might be able to find one 2nd hand if you're lucky. here's an ebay for it... from Australia though, not exactly local to Charleston.... but at least there's some pics - the Bridgestone web site doesn't even have top view, address pics of this driver.... hopeless. http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bridgestone-Golf-Tour-Driver-J40-430-8-5-deg-Stiff-Flex-See-Description-/271190283046?pt=AU_GolfClubs&hash=item3f24335326

I had the TS 705 mini for a while, but the old Adams couldn't be beat. Solid feel but nowhere near the good feel and sound of the Adams 9015d. I'm nuts about my new(ish) Mizuno 611 which is 410ccc and Endo goodness....

Who? My best friend is in Chicago - so i'll be visiting some time, and would love a good iron shaft fitting with trackman etc....

Offer the RF551 finish as an option, and errrr, that's about it. Offset seems ideal to me - slightly less than my beloved 301's, and a perfect match to the AF-Tours. Any less and you get towards the zero offset which starts looking weird and bad again... the no offset Scratch irons i've seen (in pics) looked wrong. A little bit of offset looks 'right' to me... just not Ping G sized (!). I think better to look at an easy quick fit hosel system so different shafts can be quickly demo'd for fitting Epon irons. Personally I don't feel Epon need to do the Taylor Made churn n burn marketing thing, bringing out inconsequential marketing inspired nonsense every few months. The 301's were same as Technicity 1 (?) for how many years? But that's me...

Perfect. The same shaft is the best way to get an honest idea. A group of testers would be even better to get different players/swings to compare results - wish i was in Tokyo to give it a go... discard the worst head and retry with the Miz 611 ... unless you have one of those already shafted with the X already

It is beautiful - and fantastically 'modest'.... no bling, graphics, adjustable b@llocks or silly 'tour' stamping. Lovely gloss black pear shaped head. Black gloss shaft is standard (with probably the least amount of writing/graphics i've ever seen on a OEM shaft), black GP grip and a lovely black headcover. Stealth and feels no need to shout. I wish i'd gone ahead and had the Nunchuk resprayed black before I had it fitted..... Here it is again.... for deepness and useable face area here's my pic comparing it to a Yonex 380 and an Adams 9015d (460cc)... almost as deep as the 9015d (which is a deep face 460cc driver). 611 is definitely not hook prone - especially at flatter lie ( i can hook the 9015d with it's open face on a bad swing...)

What you need is another set of 302's... but custom lofted (and of course copper chrome). I was thinking if i get my swing sorted where i want it/think it may get i may like a set one club weak... ie the 46 degree lofted club would be the 9 iron, not the pitching wedge. Just order the set stamped one club weak.... In your case, you'd need the 46 degree club stamped '8' to give you semi-sane yardages. eeer, or 7?

I know i've been banging on about the Mizuno 611... but really. If you want excellent looks and performance (and Endo forged) get the 611. Want anti-left - then get the 611 with the ability to order a far more realistic (than the absurd 60 degree ones) lie angle of 56 1/2 dgerees. Want more anti-left and you like heavier shorter shafted setups... get the 611 with Nunchuk shaft at 44" made up length. Done. Money spent, now you can get on and enjoy your driving on the golf course.

The Nunchuk does seem to cut spin - I have it in both the Adams and the 611. The Adams is labelled at 10.5, but probably is a bit higher in reality, whereas Mizuno's tend to be closer to stated (and more so with the Craft gear). Can still hook it with the Nunchuk, but bad shots seem to have reduced curve on them and stay on the golf course, which is handy..... Bear in mind, weights in the 611 sole and back are far, far less back than they would/could be in an equivalent 460cc head with a less deep face - you know, the big a@ss long from heel to toe and front to back style - the 611 is much shallower front to back, so it seems to me the weights help gain back the MOI you lose with the deep face and smaller 410cc. If you're tempted by the Nunchuk combo, the 10 deg 611 would be good, i reckon... unless you launch way, way high all the time. Think my launch angles are usually around 10 to 12 degrees at 105 to 110mph clubhead (on good ones, haha) and the flight is really lovely. Seems to get way out there. Didn't hit it with the original shaft, so can't say how it does with other shafts, but Vegaman also seems to be getting good flight (ie not 'high' launch) so... Lovely club, and i recommend the flat lie option if you tend to draw the ball.

very big (!) Seriously, it seems very good and forgiving - the 50cc's that have been taken away, seem to have been removed from areas high in the toe and heel that are not in use anyway... almost the whole face seems decently useable. Check out the face on pic in this thread and you'll see how big the useable face area is compared to a 380cc Yonex and how the 460cc Adams head compares.. More pics and full report here

The S-Yard t388 and the Mizuno 611 are a good pear shape - the others, I couldn't say.

I have the 10 degree 611 as well, and just as Vegaman says - the 611 is definitely not high launch... not low either, but due to low spin gives a really, really good flight. I just pulled the shaft and put a nunchuk in - the head weight of the 611 seems about 200gm. Can't order head onlty, but at least the lie can be ordered decent. Really good looking shape to it, too. I had the Yonex 380, it is even more pretty shape at address - but feel is not so good, and performance is nothing like the 611 ro an Adams 9015d. To give you an idea, here's a pic showing the face of L to Right :- Yonex 380, Adams 9015d, Miz 611